Fatberg:
THE fatbergs are coming. These huge lumps of cooking oil and wet wipes lurk beneath UK streets, threatening to block sewers and put everyone off their lunch.
And they really are huge. In 2017, a 250-metre-long, 130-tonne monstrosity was found under Whitechapel in east London – a piece of it still resides at the Museum of London. Last year, another rivalling it in size was found south of the river Thames and later analysed on a TV programme called Fatberg Autopsy, while in December, a whopping 800 tonnes of fat were removed from sewers in Cardiff. Even a relatively modest 64-metre blockage in Sidmouth, Devon, made national headlines last month. So is this a new problem, or do Brits just have a new-found love of talking about it? [“All you want to know about fatbergs but are too disgusted to ask,” Kelly Oakes, NewScientist (26 January 2019, paywall)]
